Judge Napolitano on the government's invasion of James Rosen's press rights.
"Prior to securing Kim’s indictment, the Department of Justice obtained a search warrant for Google’s records of Rosen’s personal emails by telling a federal judge that Rosen had committed the crime of conspiracy by undue flattery of Kim and appealing to Kim’s vanity until Kim told Rosen what he wanted to hear. In a word, that is rubbish. And the FBI agent who claimed that asking a source for information and the federal judge who found that the flattering questions alone constituted criminal behavior were gravely in error.This sounds much more like intimidation than criminal investigation. Article mentions a few of the many examples of Obama lawlessness.
Reporters are protected in their craft by the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court has ruled that they can ask whatever questions they wish without fear of prosecution. If Kim revealed classified information to Rosen — a charge Kim vigorously denies — that is Kim’s crime, not Rosen’s. The Supreme Court ruled in the Pentagon Papers case that it is not a crime for a journalist to seek secrets, to receive them, to possess them and to publish them so long as they affect a matter of material public interest.
The government’s behavior here is very troubling. Government lawyers and FBI agents are charged with knowing the law. They must have known that Rosen committed no crime, and they no doubt never intended to charge him, and they never have. They materially misled the judge, who saw the phrase “probable cause” of criminal activity (taken from the Fourth Amendment) in their affidavit in support of the search warrant they sought, and he signed. The judge should have seen this for the ruse it was. It is inconceivable that a person could conspire to commit a crime (release of classified information) that is impossible for that person to commit, particularly with a Supreme Court case directly on point."
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